Every year Americans dispose of approximately 80 billion pounds of food waste and very little of that waste is recovered. This means that for the 312.7 million people in the U.S., over 250 pounds of food per person is thrown out every year. Food sent to a landfill represents lost opportunities to improve management efficiencies, to reduce operating costs, to feed the hungry, to recover valuable resources, and to realize other benefits.
The National Restaurant Association (NRA) has partnered with the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association (GMA) and Food Marketing Institute (FMI) in order to address this important issue. Together we formed the Food Waste Reduction Alliance (FWRA), which has two goals - reduce the amount of food waste sent to landfills and increase the amount of unsaleable food donated to food banks. The purpose of this survey is to better understand how much food is being donated, how much food waste is being recycled or recovered, and how much is sent to landfills and other waste disposal facilities in the United States.
Your participation in this simple survey is critical to the success of this important initiative. To ensure confidentiality, we have engaged BSR (Business for Social Responsibility), a highly regarded sustainability organization to handle all of the data. Results will only be presented to NRA, GMA, and FMI in the aggregate without attribution to any company. You may complete this survey online or in Word document format.
BSR will remove all identifying information before providing the aggregated data to FWRA members. If follow up is required, it will be conducted by BSR so as to maintain confidentiality.
If you have any questions or require additional information regarding this survey, please contact Laura Abshire at NRA (202-973-5380) or Corinna Kester at BSR (415-984-3244).